Sociolinguistics and CMC

i love that pwn is, like, everywhere.

the sociolinguist in me wants to scream lexical borrowing, and use that claim to not only validate the status of leet as a distinct register, but to also argue the existence of a mainstream variety of internet english that has absorbed this feature into its lexicon. i think what's happening here is very similar to, say, the borrowing of aave terms into standard english, and would go further to compare the recent trend of mock ebonics to the recent trent of mock leet. i'd say the two language varieties are similar in pretty striking ways, even if they also have their extreme differences. and, um, don't get me wrong. they do.
 

oh, and i have no idea what the x __ x format means - i've only seen it in user names and nicks where it made some sort of straight edge reference.
 

i think that serious academic work can definitely come out of your observations about 'pwn'. for instance, you could look at where this occurs. what kinds of contexts is this used in? who is using it? how do people judge the users of this form? is the form something that's being borrowed into a more standardized (read: less marked) form of written (not necessarily online) language (i.e. do we see this in print media as well)?
 

i thought this was cool:

a student recently posted to our webct on how internet 'language' wasn't viewed as really appropriate in the academic environment, and used an example of a student using the word 'Sk8te' and sounding unprofessional.

any in-group user of that alphanumericosomething feature would have just typed 'sk8', and i thought this example was way more interesting than it probably is.

anyway, i like josh's point of whether this might appear in print - i'd think a college newspaper, maybe, or some pop magazine? i've heard 'pwn' spoken before (usually as 'pawn', but also as /po:n/).
 

I don't think it'll ever be used in print media (in our lifetimes, anyway) for anything other than phenomena-referential headlines, like this R We D8ting?, about text messages in the context of dating relationships, from the NYT. (BTW I thought this headline was hilarious because, first of all the "t" is redundant, and second of all if you were texting you'd probably take out the "i", too, right?)

As for it being used online like in these blog headlines, yes the blogger generally elsewhere uses standard language, with some other onlinelingo flair here and there. So a question is, at what point does PWN stop being novel funny "ha-ha look at me i'm writing on the internet," and start getting integrated as a term to be used seriously? I.e. ironic to sincere usage. (I know this happens but want to find out more about it [sources?]: I always analogize to my propensity to say "dude," which started out as a joke and now is the naturally occurring first thing out of my mouth in too many instances.)

In other news, I recently graded a set of undergrad papers and found that a few students use the ALL CAPS method of emphasis rather than the more traditional and formal italicization. Have you seen this as well? I've always thought teachers who were like, "online lingo is creeping into academic papers" were kind of full of it, but maybe it's true.
 

online lingo really IS creeping into academic papers - i've seen a few tonite's, becuz's, and fer's in papers already. yes, fer, fer sure.

i've also seen the *emphasis* as well as the EMPHASIS in type.
 

I also just saw this headline in NYT:

Got 2 Extra Hours for Your E-Mail?
 

and from Bitch Ph.D.:

OMG, teh cute!1111
 

MTV is running a special this week called "Gam0RZ Week". it is in the popular media, but it still has this connection to "internet dorks"
 

and another one bites the dust. thanks, mtv.

you know, something totally needs to be written on the 'orz' suffix. i wonder if language would print it if it talked about the interesting morphological processes at work here.